CAMPUS PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGNS OF LIES AND BLOOD LIBELS AGAINST ISRAEL/JEWS CONTINUE—HERE A BATTLE LOST, THERE A BATTLE WON

BATTLEGROUND YORK U

Joanne Hill

Jewish Tribune, March 28, 2013

Pro-Israel students were visibly upset and some were crying after the York Federation of Students (YFS) passed a motion to endorse and promote boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Students felt angry, frustrated and “very dejected” following last week’s “kangaroo court,” said York student Geoffrey Aharon.

“To know that our union does not care about us, [that] they are more than happy to directly target Jewish, Israeli students and any student that is a supporter of Israel, and create a hostile environment at our university, is one of the most disappointing and upsetting things I’ve ever experienced at York. I am absolutely ashamed and disgusted to be a student at York University because…I am forced to be a member of the YFS.” The BDS supporters were obviously delighted by the vote.

“They now have their radical agenda signed, sealed and approved by the YFS,” said Chaim Lax, president, Hasbara at York. Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) presented a petition bearing more than 5,000 signatures and asked the YFS to endorse a global BDS campaign and demand that the university administration take part.

Five pro-Israel students, including Lax and Aharon, and five anti-Zionist students addressed the YFS before the vote. Only one board member – Ruth Johnson, director of Winters College – attempted to inject some measure of fairness into the motion. The meeting was “of interest to me because the entire student body needs to be represented and I didn’t feel like that was happening,” said Johnson. “Taking a stance on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to that degree and demonizing Israel wasn’t something that was conducive to the unity of our student body.”

It was only by chance that the pro-Israel side found out about the meeting. Johnson said she wasn’t informed of the meeting by YFS, either. Pro-Israel students have been gathering signatures for their own petition calling on the YFS to reject BDS. They were 1,000 signatures shy of the 5,000 required before a petition can be submitted. “We showed up with the petition anyway…and said, it’s true that we don’t have 5,000 but we have 4,000 of your constituents saying they don’t want this to happen, so you should take that into consideration before casting your vote,” said Lax.

The anti-BDS petition was ignored, according to Johnson, Lax and Aharon. Johnson proposed tabling the issue until the signatures on both petitions could undergo formal audits but no one seconded her motion. So she took another approach. “I removed the word ‘Israel’ from the motion and suggested inserting condemnation of all human rights infringements across the world,” said Johnson. That motion was not seconded, either. Johnson was told her amendment was too broad in scope. She tried a third motion. “I decided I would include Israel; however, I would also add Palestinian human rights violations to make it two-sided rather than simply demonizing Israel.” Again, no response.

Johnson said she and Kirsten LaBonte, director of York’s Faculty of Fine Arts, voted against SAIA’s motion and everyone else voted in favour. “I think the big issue now is the Jewish students’ relationship with the YFS,” said Hillel Genesove, president, B’nai Brith on Campus. “We’re going to have to see next year how that changes or how people feel [and] if they’re comfortable with the YFS after this decision…. There’s definitely a lot more tension now, having to deal with the YFS, but I think we can work through it.”

Pro-Israel students are now discussing their next move, but it’s also time for donors to take a stand, said Aharon. “Donors should understand that the universities that they’re supporting financially are becoming radicalized institutions,” he said. “We know that [York] President [Mamdouh] Shoukri has said many times before that the administration would not adopt the BDS movement. But, if today’s radicals become the norm tomorrow, they won’t seem so radical anymore. The donors are supporting universities that have fostered…an environment that has become toxic for Jewish students.”

Hamid Osman, executive director YFS, did not respond to the Jewish Tribune’s requests for an interview.

An estimated 200 students attended the meeting. Anti-Israel activists Jesse Zimmerman, James Clark of the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, and SAIA’s Hammam Farah were present. Before the meeting started, the YFS tried to have the Tribune’s reporter ejected from the building. When the Tribune resisted, a rabbi who runs a program at the university expressed fear that the Jewish students’ good relationship with York security might have been jeopardized.

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CAMPUS BLOOD LIBEL

Charles Jacobs

Front Page Magazine, March 15, 2013

Spring’s coming. Get ready for Israeli Apartheid Week on campuses across the nation. Here in Boston last week, Harvard got off to an early start: the college’s Palestine Solidarity Committee placed mock eviction notices on students’ doors, warning students that their rooms were “scheduled for demolition in the next three days.” This was then likened to “the unlawful displacement of Palestinians.”

That little psychodrama is just the prelim to a full program which will include anti-Israel films, the construction of an “apartheid wall” in the Science Center Plaza, and a talk by Hizbollah supporter, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky — who just may be the American Jew most proud to be ashamed that he’s a Jew. At Northeastern University, where Professors Denis Sullivan and Shahid Alam have proudly been working for decades to foment hatred of Israel (see www.shameonneu.com) the schedule is even more fulsome: From March 11-15, students will be shown two anti-Israel propaganda films, one even narrated by Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple. There will be a mock checkpoint constructed on the Centennial Commons, and all week long there will be a lighted sign flashing: “End Israeli Apartheid.”

NEU President Aoun, who has finally come under pressure to do something about his radical, anti-Israel/anti-Semitic professors, might find it useful now to emulate Jason Kenney, the Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, who condemned Israeli Apartheid Week as simple anti-Semitism.  Aoun, who is Christian Lebanese, surely knows that Middle East Christians are the ones suffering from something pretty close to apartheid – in every one of the lovely Arab-dominated states they nervously inhabit. Condemning the lie about Israel while outing the real oppressors would be a double mitzvah.  True, he’d have a tenured tantrum on his hands. Meanwhile, the silence of the Jewish Studies Department there continues to astonish.

At Boston University, there will be a sham conference on “The Right of Return.” Several scholars who oppose the idea that Palestinians in vast numbers should be allowed to flood into Israel, thereby extinguishing the Jewish state, have submitted proposals to give papers. As of this writing the “conference” conveners have not responded to any of them, so any pretense that their panel is “academic” is a farce. Just more political theatre. So what do we do about all this? The ADL has said it is “outraged” by the Harvard eviction notices.  Nice, but then what?

I attended a workshop last week at the mammoth, yearly AIPAC Policy Conference which addressed the surge of anti-Israelism on the campuses.  The two speakers representing Jewish organizations that work on campuses came to promote what has become the Jewish Establishment’s only acceptable strategy; it’s called “retail engagement.” Responding to anti-Israel activity publicly with counter arguments, they say, has been shown to be ineffective. “Debate,” they argued, “has no audience.” A better approach is to get to know other students personally, especially student leaders, to build relationships with them, to “make friends, not arguments.”

Much of this makes sense. Cold facts and logic don’t win over most people. So much of politics is personal. Being popular and playing on emotion is often key.  This sort of engagement is clearly necessary — but why would anyone think it’s sufficient to win? Isn’t the other side much larger? Can’t they reach out to more leaders? To be truthful — aren’t they often more charming?

And don’t they have a big advantage? In our leftist-dominated culture which is obsessed with victimhood, the other side continually offers students what seems the high moral road — a victimhood campaign. In a low-information age, a picture of an Israeli tank next to a Palestinian child is enough to set people’s judgment against us, sometimes for good.

Our problem is that they lie. Another reason that “retail engagement” alone won’t win is that there is something more emotionally powerful than personal friendships at stake: In our world, people see themselves as good and moral people if they are for the underdog, and against oppression. If pro-Israel students, no matter how engaging, are seen to be supporting a cause that people fear taints them morally, friendship with charming Zionists will not often prevail.

No, friendship is not the magic bullet. To win, Jewish students will have to do harder things: They have to re-capture the emotional argument that counts most:  Not that we are individually nice people, but that Israel is a decent nation that is being lied about.  Jews are being victimized. That is the central truth of the matter, but exists now as the elephant in the PR room. Winning people to this central truth– that they are lying about us – means that pro-Israel students are going to have to do something the Jewish Establishment tells them not to do: they are going to have to call the campaign of lies what it is. They are going to have to talk to their friends about the people who are doing the defaming. They are going to have to “go negative.” What we face is more than a social popularity contest: it’s a political/ideological war; surely we know by now that it will take more than being charming if we mean to win.

It is time Jewish students stopped crowing that gays can march in Tel Aviv and started calling the propaganda crusade against us what it is: Bull! Lies! A hoax! The most inconvenient truth for our adversaries is that the horrors the Arab/Islamic world has falsely charged against Israel, are things they have actually done themselves — and are still doing…. While the “human rights” world keeps relatively mum. Land theft? The Arab world started out in Arabia and conquered the rest by jihad. Cruelty? Take a look at how women are treated, at how Sunnis treat Shias and vice versa. Is it now 70 or 80,000 dead in Syria? How many black slaves serve Arab masters across Arab north Africa?

Apartheid? Jewish students should say: “glad you brought that up. Because if you are truly interested in institutionalized subjugation in the Middle East, then talk to Simon Deng, an African who was enslaved by Arabs in Sudan; or to Mohammed Yahya, an African Muslim from Darfur, whose people are being massacred by Arabs for resisting Arabization; or to Caroline Doss, a Christian women from Cairo, whose people shiver to think what may soon happen to them because of the wonderful Arab spring. (They’re all available.) Apartheid in the M.E. is not about Israel at all. That’s a scam. The real apartheid is in the Arab/Islamic states.

If pro-Israel students can convince their classmates that anti-Israelism is based on lies  — inversions, actually — Israel might just win on campus. Sure, it helps if pro-Israel students are likeable but only if they have the courage to state the truth and the wisdom not to listen to their establishment “leaders” might their efforts be decisive.

Charles Jacobs is the President of the Americans for Peace and Tolerance.

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MUST WE COMBAT [CAMPUS] ANTI-SEMITISM?

Kenneth L. Marcus

Jerusalem Post, Jan. 23, 2013

I was asked the question most recently last week in the well-appointed downtown offices of a major Jewish organization. But I have heard it surprisingly often since I founded the Louis D. Brandeis Center to combat campus anti-Semitism: “Do you really think that fighting anti-Semitism is the best approach to Israel advocacy?” The question is invariably issued as a challenge, sometimes even an admonition. Implicitly, Jewish leaders want to know whether it makes sense to focus on the “negative,” when the vogue in Israel advocacy is to be relentlessly positive. “No,” I always reply, “It is not even the second best approach.”

I sometimes begin by pointing out that I do not fight anti-Semitism to advance Israel advocacy.

Rather, I fight anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is evil, and it must be defeated. If the 20th century taught us anything, it is that Jew-hatred cannot be allowed to fester. But this sometimes feels like belaboring the obvious. As far as Israel advocacy goes, the best approach is undoubtedly very different. Those who want to give Israel a better image, on college campuses or elsewhere, really should focus on the positive. In this respect, the American Jewish establishment is not wrong. Israel’s positive attributes are quite compelling, whether one focuses on the country’s extraordinary history, cultural offerings, or scientific advances. When people think of Israel, they should think first of the country’s gifts to the world. Israel advocates increasingly understand this.

Fighting anti-Semitism should not come second for Israel advocates either. After painting a positive portrait of Israel’s assets, Israel advocates must focus next on addressing Israel’s legitimate critics. For many reasons, Israel is continually subjected to heaps of abuse in the international community. Israel’s defenders are wise to anticipate criticisms and respond to them. Advocates should present facts which rebut the fictions that are told about the Jewish state. When combined with positive pro-active messaging, a fact-based educational campaign can be very persuasive. But it will never succeed. That is to say, Israel advocates will never prevail if they stop there.

The problem is that key influentials are not convinced by rational arguments, fact-based approaches, or positive-imaging campaigns. Anti-Semitism it is at the root of intractable anti-Israel animus. That is the only rational explanation for the extraordinary double standards Israel always faces in the international community. Although there are relatively few hard-core anti-Semites on Western campuses, these hard-core haters are disproportionally influential, because university culture gives disproportionate credence to radical, anti-establishment voices. These opinion leaders are not persuaded by informational campaigns because their attitudes are more psychological than intellectual.

There was a time during the mid-20th century when American Jewish organizations generally believed in educational campaigns to defeat anti- Semitism. They felt, as one leader put it at the time, that “lack of information was basically responsible for group hostilities.” Their assumption was that prejudiced people accepted anti-Jewish stereotypes because they lack accurate information about or first-hand experience with Jews. Jewish leaders believed at that point that they could eliminate prejudice by teaching white American gentiles about the various ethnic, racial and religious groups within the United States.

That naïve perspective has long since vanished from the Jewish communal world, except when it comes to Israel advocacy. By the 1950s, it was well established that anti-Semitism could not be addressed by facts alone. Psychologists explained that, since anti-Semitism is the product of psychological factors, it is unlikely to be altered by superficial educational or propaganda techniques. Educational efforts which concentrate on disseminating correct information and disproving errors fail to address the psychological and sociological roots of anti-Jewish prejudice….

Never mind that we must fight anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is wrong. Israel advocates must also fight anti-Semitism because, if that fight is not won, they will be forever doomed to the Sisyphean task of swatting down myths and distortions whose source they refuse to address. Israel advocates are wise to stress positive imaging first and fact-based campaigns second. But the third prong in their strategy must be an effective plan for combating anti-Semitism. Otherwise, no amount of positive imaging or educational pamphlets will succeed.

So do not ask me if combating anti-Semitism is the best way of doing Israel advocacy. It may be the third-best option, but it is still the sine qua non of any successful strategy. But we must fight anti-Semitism regardless of its importance to Israel advocacy, because it is the right thing to do.

Kenneth L. Marcus is founder and president of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

OXFORD STUDENTS RESOUNDINGLY REJECT BDS MOVEMENT

Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Jewish Press, February 27, 2013

Oxford University, the oldest university in the English-speaking world, is an exemplar of academic elite institutions.  Tonight,  February 27, the student leadership there voted to reject the motion to join in and promote the economic and political warfare anti-Israel effort known as the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.

Students had been discussing the motion and voted in their own colleges in advance of tonight’s vote. “This boycott goes against everything the university stands for.  The idea that we are not going to read your books or articles or hear your arguments on the basis of your nationality is ridiculous,” Henry Watson, a student at Magdalen College, a constituent college of Oxford, said.  Magdalen College voted to defeat the motion 39-3, earlier this week.

The representatives of the affiliated Oxford colleges, who comprise the Oxford Student Union Organization, met in St. Edmund Hall tonight where the motion was put immediately to a vote.  The motion was defeated, 69 – 10.  There were 15 abstentions. Had the motion passed, Oxford would have been required to recommend to Britain’s National Union of Students that they join the global BDS movement against Israel. A representative of Brasenose College, Eylon Aslan-Levy, said, “Tonight Oxford students showed that their commitment to intellectual freedom is unshakeable.  In rejecting calls for a boycott against Israel by a seven-to-one margin, we demonstrated resoundingly that we want Oxford to continue to cooperate with Israeli academics, trade with Israeli businesses and – yes – debate with Israelis in debating societies.”

Aslan-Levy was in the news earlier this week.  He was slated to present the opposing side in a debate the topic of which was, “Israel should withdraw immediately from the West Bank.” When he began his response, his opponent, British member of parliament George Galloway, stormed out of the room upon learning Aslan-Levy is Israeli. “I hope that other British universities will follow Oxford’s lead in standing up against divisive attempts to hinder academic cooperation and progress,” Aslan-Levy said.

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On Topic

Standing Tall in Santa Cruz: U.C. Lecturer Wages War Against Anti-Jewish Activity on Campus: Ben Harris, Campus Watch,  Nov. 3, 2011—For the past 10 years, Rossman-Benjamin has been following that same directive with single-minded determination: Focusing on "form" and "how it looks," she has been tracking incidents of anti-Israel activity at this coastal campus. Perhaps in isolation, the incidents she tracks might be considered legitimate stands against the Jewish state, even when the criticism is harsh, as it often is.

Israel Apartheid Week: A Tale of Two Brothers: David Solway, Front Page Magazine, March 1, 2013—Driving past the University of Toronto recently, I noticed a lone protestor on the perimeter of the campus carrying a sign objecting to Israel Apartheid Week. I was reminded that the University of Toronto was the first academic institution to host and promote the scandal of this event

Israeli Apartheid Week 2013 (The Real Truth) – Video:  Dennis Prager, Prager University, Feb. 14, 2013

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